Thursday, July 17, 2014

Iraq snapshot

Thursday, July 17, 2014. Chaos and violence continue, Nouri makes a mess of everything, 'reporter' Hannah Allem piles the blames on others, fact checking her outlandish lies let's us drop back to the realities others ignored in real time, how did Nouri get a weaponized drone in Mosul, did Iraq just get their first suicide bomber from Australia, and much more.

Nouri al-Maliki is a thug. The 'liberal' media -- Scott Horton's Antiwar Radio, Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! and so many others -- have whored for Nouri and they continue to whore for him.

Yesterday on Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman continued her war against Iraqi Sunnis by booking noted Sunni hater Patrick Cockburn as well as the always ridiculous Hannah Allem (McClatchy Newspapers) who somehow, someway, just happens, repeatedly, to slant things so that Sunnis come off so badly. Now that Patrick's documented hatred of Sunnis has moved from Arabic social media into the mainstream media, we can ignore him and just zoom in on Hannah.

Hannah Allem: Down in Najaf, even more important than the
prime minister’s call to arms was the fatwa issued by the Shia highest
authority in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. He issued a call to arms
that asked all Iraqis to come and help in the defense of the nation.
And he and his office and officials around him have stressed several
times that that was not a sectarian call to arms, that it was a
patriotic national duty. But that’s not how it’s been interpreted on the
ground, and it’s not how it’s playing out on the ground. It has given
religious cover to the remobilization of militias that the government
spent—and the U.S. military, when it was here, spent—the past several
years trying to disband.

We have to stop Hannah there, the lies are just too intense.

Hannah lies in July of 2014 that Shi'ite militias are reforming.

Really?

In the summer of 2014?

We're going back to October 4, 2013 and the start and the end of the excerpt will be signified by "**********." Excerpt:

Preachers of Friday-prayers called on the sit-inner in their sermons to
continue the sit-ins as are the only way to get rid of injustice and
abuse policy.They said in the common prayer which held in six
regions of Diyala province : " Iraqi government must not deal with the
demands of the protestors in a double standard . Urging worshipers to
unify their stand until getting the demands, release innocent prisoners
and detainees from prisons.

Kitabat reports
that Sheikh Mohammed al-Dulaimi spoke at the Falluja protest and
accused the government of supporting militias who target and kill
Sunnis. The Sheikh said that instead of implementing the demands of the
protesters, the government would rather target or ignore the
protesters. National Iraqi News offers the Sheikh said, ""The Iraqi government rather than implement the demands of the
protesters and adopt genuine reconciliation with people, it tracking and
embarrassing the protest leaders,since 9 Months ago claimants the
usurped legal rights."

Sheikh Mohammed al-Dulaimi is correct in his accusation: Nouri
al-Maliki (prime minister and chief thug of Iraq) is supporting Shi'ite
militias. Tim Arango (New York Times) broke that story last week
-- but somehow the US Congress and the rest of the media missed it.
(The media may be playing dumb. Members of Congress actually missed it,
I spoke with several yesterday about Tim Arango's report.) Arango
noted:

In supporting Asaib al-Haq, Mr. Maliki has apparently made the risky
calculation that by backing some Shiite militias, even in secret, he can
maintain control over the country’s restive Shiite population and,
ultimately, retain power after the next national elections, which are
scheduled for next year. Militiamen and residents of Shiite areas say
members of Asaib al-Haq are given government badges and weapons and
allowed freedom of movement by the security forces.

**********************************

So the October 4th protests were noting that the Shi'ite militias were regrouping and attacking them and the New York Times' Tim Arango was even reporting that Nouri al-Maliki was arming and garbing Shi'ite militias?

Kind of an important detail.

And one of the reasons the Sunnis felt so targeted.

But leave to Whore Hannah to show up in July 2014 and claim that Shi'ite militias were reforming -- Shi'ite militias who reformed long ago.

Hannah Allem: So we’re talking about groups like Muqtada
al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, which was a splinter
group of the Mahdi Army trained by Iran, close ties to Iran, and several
other Iranian-backed Shia Muslim militias. And then, on top of that,
you’ve got tribes that are offering up tens of thousands of their
members, and you’ve got these just ordinary teenagers, you know, and
young men who are answering the call on religious grounds. So, it’s this
hodgepodge of forces. They really sort of lack a central command. So
far they’ve said that they would all play fair and answer to the
government and work within the government structure. But that’s just
simply not the case. There are just too many people with arms roaming
around with disparate leaders.

Okay, Moqtada's Mahdi Army? I have no idea whether it reformed or not but those rumors of it reforming started in early 2013.

To take the heat off Hannah, let's note the load of the crap that came up next:

NERMEENSHAIKH: Well, last month Democracy Now! interviewed former U.N. special envoy for Syria, Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi.
He was previously the U.N. special representative for Iraq. He
suggested that sectarianism in Iraq was fostered in the early years of
the U.S. invasion and occupation.

LAKHDARBRAHIMI:
The impression one had was that the people that were preferred by the
occupying powers were the most sectarian Shia and the most pro-Iranian
Shia, so, you know, that Iran—that Iraq is now very, very close to Iran.
Again, from the point of view of somebody who looks at things from
outside, I have absolutely no knowledge of what went on in the high
spheres of power in Washington. The impression we had is that these
people were put in charge either out of total ignorance—and that is
extremely difficult to accept—or intentionally. But the fact is, you
know, that the system that was established was very sectarian.

NERMEENSHAIKH:
Hannah Allam, that was Lakhdar Brahimi, the former U.N. special envoy
for Syria. He was previously the special representative, the U.N.
special representative for Iraq. Could you comment on what he said and
also on reports of the Islamic State’s violence and atrocities, really,
against Sunni Muslims, in addition to Shia and Kurds?

But Nermeen is beyond stupid. Brahimi's a tool, no one expects honesty from tools.

No, the US government -- under Bully Boy Bush -- did not choose to back Iraqis (Iraqi exiles) because these were Iraqis close to Iran.

That's beyond stupid, it's a lie.

We have to do a back story here.

I don't care for Naomi Klein. The woman's a piece of trash. She became that before she whored (and lied) for Barack. She became a piece of trash as she did the bare minimum a Canadian activist could do for war resisters. She'd sign a petition but that's about little Naomi could manage.

She certainly wouldn't stand with them. She wrongly feared she'd loose access to the United States.

No, she wouldn't have. She was an American citizen. Bully Boy Bush couldn't have kept her out of the country.

What's that?

She's Canadian?

Yeah, she has dual citizenship. Because her parents are Americans. Her mother and her father.

Her parents went to Canada during Vietnam. Her father was a war resister.

So for that trashy mall rat Naomi Klein to refuse to share her story, her family's narrative to make the case for the need for Canada to offer asylum to war resisters as they did during Vietnam?

I have no use for Naomi Klein.

As the late, great Cass Elliot used to say, "I wouldn't piss on her if she were on fire." That's how I feel about Naomi.

But when she briefly cared about Iraq, she was able to make the point that realities in Iraq weren't accidents.

And we would note her Harper's essay and expand on it to point out that you have to make the people docile and fearful if you want to take them down "Year Zero."

The US government backed the exiles they did because those exiles would terrorize the Iraqi people -- keep the people fearful of safety while the US government and the installed Iraqis worked to fleece the country.

Let's go back to Hannah. We're picking right back up but don't worry about the question she was asked because Hannah talks about what Hannah wants to.

HANNAHALLAM:
Sure. I think it’s important to note that the Islamic State is not
doing this land grab, this insurgency alone. It has a lot of support,
really crucial support, especially for holding territories that it
seized, from, again, this mixture of former Baathists, ex-military and
intelligence from the old regime, some tribes. And the reason they’ve
been able to cultivate some support among those community—well, some are
just, you know, against the whole political system that was established
under the U.S. occupation.

Still with Hannah but I really want you to pay attention to what she says next:

Some haven’t come to terms with the loss of
their former power and prestige. But then there are a wide swath of
Sunni communities who are simply fed up with the sectarian policies
they’ve seen under this administration of Nouri al-Maliki.

Some Sunnis haven't come to terms with a loss of power and prestige?

Am I the only one who can see Hannah taking two skips to the right in order to next justify slavery?

Hannah is such a damn xenophobe.

Power and prestige weren't the issues for the Sunni people.

It's cute how Nouri never gets called out by the Hannahs.

This has been addressed at length in the UK's Iraq Inquiry.

Paul Bremer kicked off de-Ba'athification -- sending many Sunnis (and Shi'ites) out of the government. This was a huge mistake -- British intelligence saw it as such, check the testimonies to the Iraq Inquiry. And a huge mistake was made worse by Nouri

He was supposed to end de-Ba'athifaction. This was supposed to allow the country to unify and Nouri promised to do this in 2007. This was part of the benchmarks the White House came up with.

McClatchy reported on those benchmarks repeatedly -- they did so badly, but they did so repeatedly.

Hannah Allem: And I think
we should point out he [Nouri] first ran on a platform that was considered
nationalist. He went after Shia militias in the south, and people
thought, OK, maybe this isn’t going to be as sectarian as we feared.

What?

Shi'ite militias in the south?

Oh, the Mahdi. Yeah, with the US, he went after one Shi'ite militia, the militia of his political rival Moqtada al-Sadr.

One militia. Hannah's always got to lie. She's the proud mommy with the unaccomplished son so she just makes s**t up and hopes no one catches on.

A coalition of oppositions composed of resentful Sunni groups, former
Ba'athists and the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) - or from
its Arabic acronym as Da'ish - has been able to control most of the
Sunni populated Iraq territory (except for the Kurdistan region),
including Mosul, the second biggest city of Iraq, within a short time.
Such a sudden contagion, shows on one hand, the weakness and
ineffectiveness of the Iraqi central army and on the other hand depicts
the coalition of opposition as an important and powerful actor that
cannot be ignored in Iraq anymore. There are also signals showing that
this de facto situation will remain for a long time and may even be
permanent. When the PM of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Nechirvan Barzani
said that "it is difficult to be able to return to the order before
Mosul in Iraq" in an interview on the BBC, he was most probably
referring to this reality. The conflict which has become particularly
violent is escalating in Iraq and transforming into an inhuman situation
with casualties increasing day by day. Hate speech by Nouri al-Maliki
and violent acts against Shia by the coalition under ISIS patronage have
deepened the separation and conflict between Sunni and Shia Muslims not
only in Iraq but also on the whole planet. Some regional powers have
made great contributions both in design and ideology to this sectarian
conflict. If this conflict is not resolved in a short time, all the
regional countries will be negatively affected in terms of economic,
social and political stability, particularly the actors that are trading
with Iraq (essentially with the Kurdistan region), including Turkey. In
such a case, regional escalation of a lasting, comprehensive and
sectarian conflict is unavoidable.

See, if you're not Hannah, you can speak honestly about Iraq.

NINA reports 1 person was killed today in Mosul and five more were left injured.

What's curious is the weapon used. A drone.

US President Barack Obama has insisted that no US drones were being used
as weapons as yet in Iraq and those present were in Baghdad.

U.S. defense officials are tamping down any talk of a quick decision on what to do next in Iraq.And on Wednesday, Mr. Obama addressed a range of foreign policy
challenges, including the Afghanistan elections, negotiations with Iran
over its nuclear program, the fighting between Israel and Hamas, and
Russian provocations in Ukraine, but there was no mention of imminent
action in Iraq. In fact, Mr. Obama didn’t mention Iraq at all.What’s going on?

A fresh assessment of Iraq’s security forces prepared by U.S.
military teams working in Iraq was delivered to the Pentagon this week.
It wasn’t exactly a sunny outlook, but Rear Adm. John Kirby, the
Pentagon press secretary, said that while defense leaders felt a sense
of urgency, they were not going to rush their work.

Dahr Jamail observes (in a repost at The Nation), " What is left of Iraq, this mess that is no longer a country, should be
considered the legacy of decades of US policy there, dating back to the
moment when Saddam Hussein was in power and enjoyed Washington’s
support. With Maliki, it has simply been a different dictator, enjoying
even more such support (until these last weeks), and using similarly
barbaric tactics against Iraqis."

Vietnam veteran Roland Van Deusen writes the Watertown Daily Times to share his thoughts on Iraq which include:Since we left Iraq, the government we set up there has replaced
almost every senior officer in the Iraqi army with Shi’ite yes-men,
regardless of their military ability. Three hundred U.S. advisers won’t
undo this damage before ISIS threatens to topple Iraq’s government.

That
government refused John Kerry’s condition that our defending them
depends upon their sharing power with Sunnis and Kurds. Yet now our
adviser/grunts are on the ground, with another 200 on the way, in spite
of our president’s saying the answer to this crisis is political, not
military. Why are we there?

“I think he has to go,” Poe told TRNS
after a subcommittee meeting on Tuesday. “He needed to go a long time
ago. He’s incompetent and has the inability to lead, and he can’t lead
all the people in Iraq. He’s trying to preserve his fiefdom, and rulers
in that situation have many times dealt in an unreal world, and do not
know they have lost their credibility and authority, and he is one of
those.”

Since begging the US government to provide 'traineers' and 'advisors' on the ground in Iraq, Nouri has demonstrated that he will not change one bit. His latest tantrum has only further inflamed tensions in Iraq. Press TV notes:Iraq’s Kurds have just recently announced plans for a referendum on the
independence of the semi-autonomous Kurdish province.The Arab League
however has downplayed the significance of these plans as “media
talk”.Meanwhile, the Kurds, including ministers in the Iraqi cabinet,
continue to disengage from Baghdad completely, following accusations by
Prime Minister Maliki that Erbil was harboring ISIL terrorists.

PNA notes, "Iraqi
Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari has urged PM Nouri Maliki to apologise
for saying the Kurdish region authorities are sheltering extremists." But when has Nouri ever worked to clean up one of his own messes?Robin Wright (New Yorker) notes Nouri's problems with the Kurds:

The Kurds have many reasons to split off. They’re furious with
Baghdad, which since January has refused to fork over the Kurds’ share
of the national kitty. They’re terrified of the sweeping territorial
conquests by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS),
an Al Qaeda offshoot, which is now poised along a six-hundred-mile
border with Kurdistan that the Iraqi Army abruptly abandoned last month.
And they’re engaged in a war of words with Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nouri
al-Maliki, about stepping aside to let a new government salvage the
nation. Last week, Maliki accused the Kurds of aiding ISIS militants. He fired all the Kurds in his cabinet, including the stalwart Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.

“He has become hysterical and has lost his balance,” Barzani, who is
now Kurdistan’s President, said in an unusually peppery statement on July 10th.
“He is doing everything he can to justify his failures and put the
blame on others.” Barzani noted that Maliki himself had once taken
refuge from Saddam’s dictatorship in Kurdistan—and that others were now
taking refuge from Maliki. Barzani also told the BBC, “Iraq is effectively partitioned now. Are we supposed to stay in this tragic situation?”

Those factors would make many tread lightly -- but not Nouri al-Maliki. He just stomps his feet, creates more problems and then begs others to clean up his mess.

Let's turn to violence. Warwick Daily News notes, "The first Australian suicide bomber in Iraq reportedly killed three people in the heart of Baghdad on Thursday, raising the involvement of local jihadists in the spiraling violence to a chilling new level." IS used a Tweet to note the bombing and dub the bomber Abu Bark al-Australi. 3 News adds, "If the man is confirmed to be Australian, he will be the first from his
country to have been involved in carrying out a suicide bombing in Iraq.

About Me

We do not open attachments. Stop e-mailing them. Threats and abusive e-mail are not covered by any privacy rule. This isn't to the reporters at a certain paper (keep 'em coming, they are funny). This is for the likes of failed comics who think they can threaten via e-mails and then whine, "E-mails are supposed to be private." E-mail threats will be turned over to the FBI and they will be noted here with the names and anything I feel like quoting.
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